To those who crucify Beauty.

 In lieu of North America hosting the World Cup, I am compelled to regurgitate one of my recurring rants: the crucifixion of beauty.

The culprit, I would argue, lies in the over-numerisation of life; in this case, sport.

Modern sports culture increasingly thrives on statistical entertainment. Basketball, American football, and most notoriously, baseball. Fans, commentators, and players alike obsess over metrics, percentages, expected goals, efficiency ratings, and records. Sport becomes a language of quantification. An outcome-centric worldview where value is validated through numbers alone.

This is not uniquely American, nor even Anglo-Saxon. Rather, it is the inevitable offspring of industrial modernity: a civilization obsessed with optimization, productivity, and measurement. The same culture that transformed workers into units of output has increasingly transformed athletes into units of performance.

Yet statistics tell us who won. Beauty tells us why we cared.

For those who, if I may, possess a certain sensitivity to beauty, there is nothing more exhilarating than witnessing Roger Federer’s backhand, Dimitar Berbatov’s nonchalant first touch, or Stefka Kostadinova’s impossibly silky leap. Such moments elevate athletes into artists rather than machines. They remind us that sport can be poetry before it becomes industry.

This is not to diminish Novak Djokovic's relentless precision or Bryson DeChambeau's monstrous drives. Their achievements are extraordinary. The issue is not that beauty and effectiveness are opposites. The issue is that effectiveness can be measured while beauty can only be experienced.

A statistic may explain a goal. It cannot explain elegance.

Perhaps this is what Pierre Bourdieu meant by habitus: taste as a form of cultural capital. Not in the vulgar sense of wealth or status, but in the ability to perceive value beyond utility. Beauty requires a certain freedom from relentless pragmatism. A rootedness. A comfort with the world that allows one to appreciate what serves no immediate purpose beyond its existence.

Yet, borrowing from Edward Said, perhaps my own position is merely a romanticisation of the Other. Perhaps this longing for beauty is itself a reaction against a civilization that has commodified everything, including excellence. Perhaps I am guilty of constructing my own mythology.

Still, give me someone who prefers Cristiano Ronaldo to Lionel Messi and I will show you two profoundly different value systems. One admires discipline, willpower, and the triumph of self-construction. The other gravitates toward intuition, grace, and the effortless appearance of genius. Neither is wrong. Yet the preference reveals something deeper than football.

Beauty, sadly, is rarely taught consciously. We teach technique, discipline, and efficiency. Beauty emerges elsewhere. It emerges through temperament, culture, memory, environment, and expression. It is the personal manifestation of one's abilities in a language entirely their own.

Untranslatable.

Unreplicable.

Beyond measurement.

And perhaps that is why beauty feels sacred. It begins precisely where quantification ends. What cannot be reduced to numbers remains, in some small way, divine.

Against the Globalization of Wisdom: Who killed the Sage?

 Among African elephants, the survival of the group does not rely solely upon individual strength or instinct. Rather, it depends primarily on the matriarch, an elder female who holds knowledge acquired over generations—paths to water, safe havens, precise identification of dangers. This precious wisdom, born from collective lived experience, is passed to younger generations through subtle, concrete, and contextually grounded dynamics. This transgenerational transmission ensures the group's continuity and resilience in the face of crises.

In humans, the elephant matriarch finds its parallel in the figure of the Sage or Elder, a person traditionally adept across multiple areas of knowledge simultaneously—medicine, philosophy, psychology, spirituality, and practical know-how. Such a person, a polymath by definition, integrates various forms of wisdom to better navigate everyday challenges. Yet this wisdom was never isolated; it was intrinsically tied to a community, or what we commonly call a tribe.

The tribe thus represents a living metaphor for any human community bound together by shared skills, a strong cultural identity, and constant social interdependence. Within this collective structure, the Sage played a fundamental role, harmonizing diverse elements to maintain cohesion and guide the group through moments of uncertainty. When a community loses its connection to this contextual wisdom, it gradually forfeits a nuanced and invaluable heritage.

Yet today, in the age of a so-called "global tribe," one might well ask: where has the Sage gone? The gradual disappearance of this figure coincides strikingly with the rise of modern scientific thought, aspiring towards absolute, universal truths. Undoubtedly, modern science has brought immense value; but doesn't it become problematic when it claims to entirely replace other forms of knowledge? When this universalist perspective neglects the richness inherent in specific human contexts, it risks becoming rigid, cold, and reductionist.

To be clear, science is not at all a static enterprise. Within its vast terrain exist disciplines that actively seek to engage with context, plurality, and lived realities: anthropology and ethnography situate human behavior within culture; ethnobotany demonstrates how indigenous ecological knowledge informs pharmacology; medical anthropology exposes how illness is shaped as much by social worlds as by biology. Neuroscience, often caricatured as reductionist, has begun to integrate findings from psychology and embodied cognition. 

Even in the so-called 'hard sciences,' knowledge is never absolute but constantly subject to revision and challenge. Physics, often seen as the paradigm of certainty, has repeatedly overturned its own foundations: Newtonian mechanics once described the universe with apparent finality, only to be reframed by Einstein’s relativity and then further complicated by the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. Science in essence is a school which should reject absolute truths, understanding the complexities and everchanging universe, not a dogmatic dogma bashing Richard Dawkins, a worldview that mistakes the provisional methods of science for the only legitimate form of truth.

The real issue, then, is not science per se but scientism—the ideology that elevates certain universalist methods as the only valid form of truth. When scientism eclipses these more pluralistic strands of inquiry, it marginalizes contextual wisdoms, erases nuanced local knowledges, and falsely presents knowledge as a single, standardized equation rather than a mosaic.

This tension between contextual wisdom and universalist thinking is far from new. Already in the 18th century, during encounters between Enlightenment European philosophers and indigenous American Sages, Europeans claimed to have "discovered" new ideas of freedom and equality. Yet such concepts had long existed among indigenous peoples. In 1744, at the Treaty of Lancaster, Canassatego, an Iroquois chief, reminded the British delegates:

"We are born free; our ancestors taught us to preserve this freedom for ourselves and our descendants."

This statement reveals an unsettling truth: European Enlightenment thinkers were merely rediscovering contextual wisdoms already long present elsewhere. Even Rousseau, indirectly influenced by these exchanges, criticized the excesses of a technocratic civilization disconnected from the living context of human communities.

The great world religions, despite their universal aspirations, similarly reflect this tension between universalism and contextual diversity. For example, the Pope, spiritual leader of the Catholic Church, historically embodied an institutionalized, centralized, and normative wisdom, sometimes bordering on spiritual authoritarianism. The Papal Bull Unam Sanctam (1302) clearly illustrates this imposed universality:

"It is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff."

Conversely, other religious traditions explicitly embrace cultural and spiritual plurality. The Quran, the foundational text of Islam, emphasizes human diversity in Surah Al-Hujurat (49:13):

"O mankind! Indeed, We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another."

Similarly, Hindu teachings found in the Bhagavad Gita underscore the multiplicity of spiritual paths toward a shared truth. Krishna states clearly (Chapter 4, verse 11):

"In whatever way people surrender unto me, I respond accordingly. Everyone follows my path in all respects, O Arjuna."

These religious insights clearly demonstrate that genuine wisdom cannot be contained within a singular, centralized, and globalized approach. Yet today, we witness ongoing attempts at quantifying and standardizing every aspect of human life: psychology reduced to neuroscience, economics simplified into cold statistics, philosophy constrained by purely logical analysis. When this form of science claims to fully encapsulate the human experience, it ignores the complex, context-specific richness of real human communities.

Thus, we must legitimately question: where has the Sage gone? Why must we constantly rediscover truths already established by other cultures? Why stubbornly believe that a universal scientific answer is inherently superior to nuanced, context-based solutions that have stood the test of time? Why not finally embrace a balanced complementarity between these approaches?

In forsaking the Sage, we forsake the very richness of our human diversity in favor of a dangerous illusion of universality. Rediscovering the Sage is not nostalgic naïveté; rather, it is a necessary act of humility and acknowledgment: understanding that humanity cannot be reduced to a universal equation, and that our true wealth lies precisely in our differences.

True wisdom can only live within specific contexts. Like the humble elephant matriarch, guardian of living, concrete, and subtle knowledge, our time urgently needs to rediscover this human figure of the Sage.

Why not begin by listening, valuing, and preserving these forgotten voices, those still speaking contextually grounded truths? Why not create a genuine, balanced alliance between ancestral wisdom and contemporary science?

The question remains open, provocative, but now clearly stated:

Where has the Sage gone, and are we finally ready to find him again?

Eau Douce

 I am made from water

Born in water 

Seeking water

My love is water and their bodies lakes, ocean seas and rivers

Some large and some small

Some salty and some sweet

Yet it's all the same for the swimmer

Another dip

Nuages

 As my earthly eyes are set at the puncture of the aircraft

I witness a battle of light 

a dance contained by soft giants

Eagerly waiting for a glimpse of one of dancers to escape 

To reach the puncture on which I witness as a mere bystander

Power

 To wield the ability to influence others is power. Now that ability comes in soft and hard form, soft form represents techniques learned and innate to the individual, seduction, leadership and such which links various other traits. It's hard form is executive hierarchical, it is a place on the ladder. 

Power isn't evil. The Christian doctrine, or Christian guilt as I will allude to it, a feeling of shame for power, rightfully so. Lucifer, Satan, one not made for absolute power seeks power but for destructive purposes while God on the other hand the all powerful is associated with eternal mercy. The message guides us towards associated the yearning for power as an evil pursuit, because yes power corrupts, that is the nuance where greed lies and insecurity flourishes. An important lesson lies here, not all are made for power. Never give a slave a whip or he will whip others as a form of catharsis, such as Tarantino's Django. The danger is not power, but the hand that grasps it without knowledge, without judgment. Often, the slave does not fabricate the vessel of power he holds; it is given, or “earned”—sometimes by his victim, sometimes by his master.

We describe a good deed as a noble one, nobility in this case tells us that one with more powerful uses it in moderation and benevolence, the noble are not thirsty for power as God isn't thirsty for it. 

Society is full of the despicable and power-hungry: rapists seeking control through the violation of the others sacredness, the female teacher who takes her frustration with the patriarchy out on her young male students, the bouncer lording over clubgoers, riot police beating Rastafarians for smoking weed, nepotistic ministers filling their pockets. They believe they are strong. But do not make the grave mistake conflating power with strength. Many weak people hold power. 

The tool of power is innate to human society it is the foundation of our behaviour, power hierarchies are everywhere. Power has been portrayed as evil, rightfully so because its excess and abuse are devastating compared to the benevolent acts of power which often time goes unheard or invisible. Maybe that's why the truly strong and powerful operate in secrecy, quietly evading the lime light when it gets hot. 

That is why ultimate power is found in its invisible source, such as the idea of God some will believe and some won't, Lucifer is much more tangible, much more human as a character, he an outcast a victim of the framework he exists in. Maybe a little tangent to design and fashion, the elite and wealthy preferring quiet luxury is rightful comparison a comfort in ones financial situation where as the nouveau rich bathe in status symbols. From the designer point of the view one can also read the lens of power, the most powerful designers as Kanye put it are unheard of such the designer and inventor of the traffic light who controls how fast you get to work or who might die at the intersection is completely invisible you don't know his name. True power exists in the shadows and grappling to it openly is a pure sign of weakness and insecurity.

So this is not an elitist take either, but one of understanding that most are victims, my tone has deep pity and disgust for these characters.

Ashes of Empire, Seeds of the South

Western radicalisation is no longer fringe—it has become mainstream. Fortress Europe. MAGA America. An Israeli state operating with near-total impunity. This isn’t the rise of new strength; it’s the decay of old power, cracking under the weight of its own mythologies.

Radicalisation is the ideological reflex of a system in decline. The late Ottoman Empire clung to religious orthodoxy as its territory unraveled. Nazi Germany, humiliated and ruined, found solace in blood and soil. Today’s Western powers echo their desperation—closing borders, blaming migrants, idealizing control.

Yet in this regression lies unexpected opportunity: the quiet liberation of the Global South.

As gates slam shut, the brain drain slows. What once fueled Western institutions—our doctors, engineers, artists—no longer flows so freely. The Global South is being compelled to build from within.

Look at Singapore: it crafted a global innovation hub grounded in geography and people. Burkina Faso under Sankara experimented with local governance, agriculture, dignity. Libya’s Gaddafi imagined a sovereign African monetary system. And Yugoslavia dared to walk a third path—non-aligned between East and West.

These weren’t flawless models. But they shared a refusal—to be defined by outside power.

Meanwhile, Israel—a settler colony cloaked in liberal rhetoric—stands as the empire’s coup de grâce. Its actions in Gaza expose the moral bankruptcy of Western governance. Silence from Western capitals speaks as loudly as any speech.

Within our own ranks, there are those who betrayed our futures. The house slaves of the postcolonial era—leaders, oligarchs, technocrats—who pillaged our nations for Western access and approval. Their betrayal is treason dressed as diplomacy.

This is not a revenge anthem. It’s a call for transcendence. We’re not seeking reversal but recalibration. A new global rhythm—one born of reciprocity, not hierarchy.

Let the West radicalise. Let it cling to purity and nostalgia. We will no longer wait. In infrastructure, digital autonomy, cultural production, education, and finance, we are laying foundations for a more inclusive world.

The future will not be Western, nor anti-Western. It will be post-Western—and in that space, we will finally speak in our own tongues.

Architects: Are we shepherds or sheep?

As shapers of the built environment, we bear a moral duty to act in favor of the greater good. However, I find myself grappling with a recurring dilemma regarding the balance between reactivity and proactivity in architecture.

During my travels, I've observed that this dilemma often relates to political ideologies and market conditions in different regions. In a binary and extreme sense, a reactive approach to design leans towards laissez-faire, merely responding to demand without considering broader societal implications. This approach is more prevalent in the US and emerging economies influenced by post-colonial legacies. The unchecked reign of free-market economics undermines sustainable architecture, reducing it to a mere commodity. This is reflected in public critiques of modern architecture as cold, inhumane, and lacking aesthetic appeal. We hold a special reverence for buildings that stand the test of time, serving as symbols of human ingenuity and attracting architectural tourism.

In contrast, proactive design aims to shape society rather than passively respond to its demands. This may require architects to assume a more authoritative role, even if it causes initial discomfort among stakeholders. Examples include prioritizing pedestrian-centric urban design or advocating for buildings designed for longevity and adaptive reuse. Some instances may even call for a total refusal to intervene, allowing spaces to evolve naturally.

Ironically, iconic structures often emerged from regions with concentrated power and incentives. Countries like Singapore and Saudi Arabia have proved proactive visions for architectural development aligned with future-oriented agendas.

However, the balance between reactivity and proactivity is nuanced and context dependent. Factors such as building typology and economic limitations significantly influence architectural solutions. In collective endeavors, architects may need to assert a more authoritative role to realize sustainable projects.

In conclusion, architects must navigate the tension between reacting to immediate demands and proactively shaping society's future. By embracing this challenge with ethical integrity and foresight, we can shepherd the built environment towards a more sustainable and equitable future.

Jobs replied. "It isn’t the consumer’s job to know what they want"

Henry Ford's famous comment, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."